Traffic slows at the Route 195 east exit off Route 95 South yesterday as it backs up from the merge with the new Route 195.

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The Providence Journal / Connie Grosch

PROVIDENCE — As nightly traffic jams caused by the newly opened section of Route 195 continued, the state Department of Transportation apologized repeatedly yesterday and said it hoped that one partial cure will improve things today, and that a second one will help even more by early next week.

“We really do apologize for any inconvenience this has caused,” said Dana Alexander Nolfe, the agency’s chief public affairs officer.

Frank Corrao III, the DOT’s deputy chief engineer in charge of construction management, said the agency will open a new entrance ramp on the city’s East Side to shift traffic past a bottleneck where Route 195 eastbound drops from three lanes to two. The agency wants to open the ramp next week.

Also, Corrao said, the DOT would be at work last night, re-striping a section of 195 eastbound in the same area to help ease traffic congestion. He said the striping would control how traffic from the South Main and Wickenden street ramps merges with traffic on Route 195.

Since Monday, the DOT has been scrambling to recover from an unpleasant surprise: Its proudest recent accomplishment, the opening of the first section of its $610-million “Iway” project to relocate Route 195, had turned into a debacle, causing some of the worst traffic jams in the metropolitan area in recent memory.

Yesterday, one annoyed commuter dubbed it the “I-wait.”

The DOT, meanwhile, said that things were getting better, and there was a suggestion that they were. A reporter’s 5.8 mile trip from Pawtucket down Route 95 to Route 195 East to the Washington Bridge that had taken 58 minutes Tuesday evening took 45 minutes last night as drivers found ways to avoid the morass.

On Sunday, the DOT had opened the new section of highway carrying northbound traffic from Route 95 across the Providence River, joining the existing Route 195 on the East Side. But with the first evening rush hour Monday, traffic backed up on Route 195 from the area where the new highway merged with the old one, clogging the road all the way to Route 95’s southbound lanes in Pawtucket.

The DOT initially focused on an obvious source of trouble, the point on the East Side where Route 195 eastbound was narrowed from three lanes to two to accommodate traffic from the new highway. The DOT had expected that two lanes would be enough. They weren’t.

The DOT has asked commuters who normally leave the city on the existing Route 195 eastbound to instead drive down Allens Avenue, take Route 95 North to the new Exit 19, and take the new highway east, bypassing the bottleneck. But the traffic tie-ups have spread from the highways to local streets. For example, drivers report that Allens Avenue was also jammed at times.

In another attempt to deal with the bottleneck, the DOT yesterday again moved up the time it hopes to open a new entrance ramp to the new highway on the East Side.

Where the existing South Main and Wickenden street ramps put traffic on the old highway just before the bottleneck, adding to the backup, the new ramp will shift it to the new highway, Corrao said, carrying it past the bottleneck.

The ramp had been planned to open next spring or summer. As the situation continued to unravel Tuesday and the outcry about the traffic jams grew, the DOT said it would open the new ramp by the end of the year. Yesterday, Nolfe said the goal is to open it early next week.

DOT officials, meanwhile, said another detour could help drivers heading south on Route 95 who would ordinarily take Exit 20 to 195 eastbound. If they pass the 195 exit and continue south and take the Thurbers Avenue exit, they can drive under the highway and immediately take the ramp to Route 95 north. That gives them access to the new Exit 19 and the new highway, and around the bottleneck.

With reports from staff writer Alisha A. Pina

blandis@projo.com